A Whole New World
by Norroen Dyrd
Summary: Two adventurers set out to clear Nchuand-Zel and return bringing with them a young Falmer.
1. Chapter 1

They dashed out into the flooded cave, banging the doors shut behind them. Ghorbash glanced around frantically, picked up a long bent metal strut and secured it across the chamber exit.

'Do you really think it will hold?' Baldr asked doubtfully, at the same time straining his keen elven hearing to discern the thundering steps of the steam centurion among all the noises of the underground city, still alive though its masters were long since gone.

'No,' the Orc replied frankly, with a violent shudder at the mental image of the great automaton crushing through their fragile barricade, 'But it's better than nothing. Where do we turn now?'

His companion surveyed the many stone bridges spanning the great cavern, his mind strenuously at work. If they took any of those passages, they would soon get lost in this puzzle of a ruin, and the centurion would gain on them while they would be stumbling about, clueless, vulnerable. What they needed was to put as much distance between themselves and the colossal killing machine as possible in a matter of a minute or so. Ghorbash watched, suspicious and a little alarmed, as Baldr's expression grew dreamily absent, which was more than odd under the circumstances, and as his amber-coloured eyes glinted with the same dancing light that had appeared when he was editing King Olaf's Verse.

'Ghorbash, my friend,' he declared finally, clapping his hands together, 'I have an astoundingly brilliant idea!'

This time Ghorbash shuddered even more violently; from what he knew of Baldr's astoundingly brilliant ideas, they usually led to trouble.

Suddenly determined and energetic, Baldr stepped up to his mutely wondering fellow adventurer and took away the shield he himself had equipped him with. He proceeded to race up to the start of a downward stone slope, smooth and slippery after ages of being used for whatever purposes the Dwarves had in mind for their bizarre constructions, laid the shield down, lowered himself onto it and beckoned to the utterly uncomprehending Ghorbash.

'Climb on behind me and push,' Baldr explained simply after the Orc had given him a flabbergasted look. 'I've only tried it on ice before, but here it should work just as well'.

They whooshed down with an ear-splitting scraping noise, their lungs gripped by claws of cold, their hearts on the verge of bursting through their clenched teeth, just at the moment when the steam centurion landed the first blow on the other side of the door.

The water was icy cold and rather painful to land into. Ghorbash hurried to propel himself towards the surface, working very hard with his limbs in order for his heavy armour not to drag him down. Baldr emerged by his side, snorting and spluttering, his hair hanging loose over his eyes like the fur of a wet dog.

'I did promise you adventure, didn't I?' he grinned cheerfully, shaking the water out of his ear. 'How's that compared to working in the stronghold?'

'Let's do it again some time,' Ghorbash said breathlessly.

The two laughed, like two boys playing an exciting game, and, finding firm ground beneath their feet, waded towards the edge of a crumbling stone platform.

Ghorbash had already crawled out onto it and straightened himself up when Baldr turned round abruptly and hurried, as far as he could while moving though water, to a place where something small and greyish could be seen, curled up among the mangled remains of some metallic paraphernalia.

Having reached the little grey thing, Baldr bent down, looked it over and called out to Ghorbash, 'Come over here! It's stuck and I need your help setting it free!'

The Orc leapt back off the edge of the platform and splashed up to Baldr. 'You mad?' he choked, poking his head from behind his companion's back, 'It's one of _them!_ Best leave it be!'

The little grey thing that had drawn Baldr's attention was a Falmer, though differing somewhat from the ones they had been coming across before - it had to be one of their offspring that usually kept to the chitin huts while the adults were skulking the dim, winding Dwarven halls. It was floating in the water, barely conscious, clinging on to a metal bar with its thin, wiry arms in order not to drown. One of its legs was twisted in an unnatural way, caught in between two large, ugly, cog-like objects, and its eyeless face was twitching with pain, mouth opening and closing like that of a fish out of water, enormous slit-like nostrils flaring greedily to breathe enough air for coping with the effort of holding on.

Baldr turned away from the wretched little being to give Ghorbash a scornful look, 'The cursed and shunned are loved by Malacath. And the Falmer are about as cursed and shunned as can be. So tut-tut to you, oh travel companion of mine, for forsaking the teachings of your god. True, these beings consider us enemies, but that shouldn't stop us from doing one a good turn when it needs it'.

The Orc gave a muffled sheepish cough and mumbled reluctantly, 'Yeah... Guess you are right. Let me give you a hand'.

It took all the combined strength of Baldr - who took great pride in being the only Altmer in Skyrim with Nord-like muscle power and a good sword arm - and Ghorbash to heave one of the cogs aside. When it was done, Baldr took the Falmer in his arms and lifted it, as gently as possible, out of its trap; the creature stirred, sniffing at the air in alarm, and made a faint, angrily hissing noise, but was too weak to do anything else; Baldr patted it on the back soothingly and even attempted to stroke its bare, leathery skull.

'Well, you have got what you wanted,' Ghorbash said in discomfort, 'Now set the thing loose and let's get out of here'.

Baldr frowned disapprovingly, 'Don't you see it can't move? Its leg needs tending to!'

'Its kind will come to its aid, sooner or later!' the Orc was beginning to get irritated.

'I doubt it,' Baldr remarked with a slight shake of his head, 'It smells of me now. They will likely not recognize it or even attack it'.

'What's your plan then?' Ghorbash asked, suspicious once more.

'We will take it with us - back to Calcelmo. He will know what to do... I think'.


	2. Chapter 2

'You certainly took your precious time,' Calcelmo grumbled with a very displeased air, tearing himself away from his heap of manuscripts to greet the returning adventurers, 'I never thought one spider would be so hard to kill'.

'Spider?' Baldr blinked, 'What spider? Oh, _that_ spider... Gods, I forgot all about it! Well, naturally, Ghorbash and I killed it first thing, but then we found the bodies of those poor researchers... And then we got kind of carried away...' He went into an extremely detailed narrative of their exploits in Nchuand-Zel, concluding it some twenty minutes later with a cheerful, 'And here we are, complete with loot and...'

At that moment, the small greyish bundle he had been carrying in his arms, suddenly came alive, wriggling and hissing and grunting; startled, Baldr laxed his grip on it, and the Falmer eeled free and attempted to push its skinny, whithered body away from the sources of unknown, frightening smells and sounds that had surrounded it - with its injured leg dragging behind, limp and lifeless, looking like a gnarled root of some monstrous tree, its good leg bent in the knee, and most pressure put on its arms, as is the manner of Falmer when they slide from shadow into shadow.

Before anyone could stop it, the poor creature upset a small table with an assortment of dwarven weaponry that Aicantar had been cataloguing for his uncle, and let out a long, shrill, spluttering shriek, having cut itself on an ornate, broad-bladed dagger.

'Looks like it's having one of those days,' Ghorbash joked grimly.

Baldr glared at him in disapproval, hurrying to the Falmer's aid, followed closely by the uncomprehending gaze of Calcelmo and his nephew. He knelt at the creature's side and stretched out his hand in a soothing gesture; the Falmer made a loud, animal-like noise of fear and hostility and bit at Baldr's fingers. He jerked his hand back, smiled at the creature, despite knowing that it could not see him, and then, to the utmost astonishment of the onlookers, uttered a short phrase in the incomprehensible, hiss-like tongue the cave skulkers could often be heard using among themselves.

'You... You can speak Falmer?' Aicantar asked, frowning in disbelief; after beholding a sight as rare as a fellow Altmer frolicking about in heavy armour, juggling greatswords and axes and not touching a single spellbook except for healing various injuries after a battle, he had started suspecting that Baldr had to be full of surprises - but this was a bit too much.

The carefree adventurer looked up with toothy grin, 'No. I don't understand a word of it. But I did memorize this little bunch of sounds - I once heard a Falmer use it while he was groping for the tip of my arrow in his kinsman's wound. Must be something friendly and encouraging... Hey, whoa, whoa, watch it! That's my nose!'

While Baldr was talking to Aicantar, the Falmer had taken to feeling Baldr's face with its bony fingers, not missing an inch, breathing in his smell in long gasps - probably wondering how a being so unlike itself - a hated surface-dweller - could have uttered the words it was accustomed to hearing only from its own people. Baldr laughed, steering the Falmer's hand away from his face - for it had felt rather like a spider crawling across his skin - and the creature echoed his laugh; the sound that came out of its fish-like mouth was wheezy, rasping, almost unnatural, but there was no mistake in what it was. Aicantar's eyes widened in awe; Calcelmo fumbled about for a quill and a sheet of parchment, his hands trembling with the anticipation of a major breakthrough in research of all things Falmer; Ghorbash passed his hand over his forehead, muttering a prayer to Malacath. A laughing Falmer_ - a laughing Falmer! - _was something they had always considered as inconceivable as Draugr whiling away the long evenings in a crypt playing ball... And yet, there it was, before their very eyes...

To add up to the general bewilderment, the Falmer repeated what Baldr had said to it, several times, pronouncing each syllable with greatest care, as if trying to show him how it was done; Baldr tried to copy its hissing manner of speaking as best he could; this little exercise went on and on until the Falmer was satisfied. After that, the Falmer apparently decided to go further; Calcelmo and Aicantar gaping at it with baited breath, it pressed its hand against its hollow chest and hissed out a single short word that was part of the phrase it and Baldr had been practicing.

'I get it!' the adventurer exclaimed excitedly, 'It must mean _heart_... The little thing is trying to teach me how to say _heart_ in its language!'

Eager, agitated - little short of ecstatic, in fact - he grabbed the Falmer by the wrist and pressed its hand against the part of his armour that was supposed to protect his heart.

'Heart!' he said firmly, 'Heart!'

'Heart...' the Falmer hissed back.

'This is weird... This is _so_ weird!' Ghorbash said weakly.

'Verbal contact with a Falmer!' Calcelmo muttered, rubbing his hands together, 'This opens so many possibilities! I wonder... Their contemporary tongue must be a rudiment of the original language of the Snow Elves...'

'Uh, Uncle,' Aicantar coughed unobtrusively, 'Shouldn't we heal the creature and feed it first? Before we go on with linguistic research?'

'Feed _her,'_Baldr piped in, 'I'm pretty sure it's a she'.

At first, Shaleetha - that, as far as Baldr and the others could make out, was the Falmer's name - spat out the bread and milk she had been given by Aicantar, overturning the bowl and throwing an extremely wild tantrum; but after picking out the crumbs from between her uneven, sharp teeth with the tip of her tongue, she deigned to accept a second helping from Baldr's hands. Judging from her vigorous munching and swallowing, it must have been a real feast compared to the stringy, bitter flesh of a chaurus. The three enthusiastic High elves and rather hesitant Orc spent the rest of the day teaching her the surface world names of those things around the laboratory that had to be familiar to her, such as stones and fungi and water; it was a tedious task, and rather dangerous, too, for out of the four of them Baldr seemed to be the only one Shaleetha trusted; she screeched and flew into a rage whenever someone else touched her. By sunset Shaleetha's injuries, skillfully tended to by Baldr and Aicantar, whose fingers she nearly snapped off, were healed completely, and Ghorbash once again brought up the subject of letting her go.

'But there is so much research to be done!' Calcelmo protested, 'Once it -I mean, _she_ - has sufficient command of our tongue, we can try to learn hers. This will add up splendidly to my collection of lore!'

'And what will you do with her, once your_ research_ is over?' Ghorbash snapped back vehemently, 'We have seen now that this wretch has thoughts and feelings - odd, but still! What will her thoughts and feelings be when you are done with her? By then, just throwing her back into Nchuand-Zel will be too late! She will become like a stronghold Orc who's been to the Legion - someone that's neither here nor there, someone belonging to two different worlds and so belonging to neither! Let her go _now,_ before she gets used to our ways! This is not where she is supposed to be... It's unnatural!'

'People said it was unnatural for an Altmer to learn melee combat and smithing and mingle with humans,' Baldr replied calmly.

'That is _different!'_ Ghorbash's voice was now almost a shout, making the intently listening Shaleetha cover in silent terror, 'You are still part of the surface world - try plucking out your eyes and living down there with _them!' _

Calcelmo pouted, looking rather like a child about to be deprived of a new toy, 'You worry too much, Orc. I am sure everything will go perfect'.

Ghorbash snorted, 'Perfect or not, I will have no part in this! I am going back to the stronghold'.


End file.
